The Prime Minister Scott Morrison is in Glasgow touting his new 'technology, not taxes' energy policy, a key part of which involves rolling out carbon capture and storage (CCS).
But whether CCS will ever be deployed at scale in Australia could come down to a multi-million dollar project being planned on Queensland's Western Downs.
Work is underway in the Surat Basin in Southern Queensland, to determine whether rock formations, deep underground, can store millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Coal-giant Glencore, through subsidiary CTSco, is looking at conducting a three-year CCS trial, and has applied for approvals from the Queensland government.
The CTSco project in Southern Queensland will capture about 110,00 tonnes of CO2 each year from the Millmerran coal-fired power station.
What is carbon capture and storage?
Carbon capture technology was pioneered in 1970s by oil companies in the US.
This Queensland trial will send the power station's exhaust, including CO2 and nitrogen, through a water-based solvent.
The CO2 attaches to the solvent, separating it, and is further processed with heat to liberate the carbon dioxide, which is then cooled for transport.
Liquefied CO2 will then be trucked to Moonie, more than 100km away.
CO2 is injected deep underground into a salty aquifer, unviable for livestock.
It will become carbonated water trapped within porous rock, 80 metres thick.
'Scaling up to capture 90 per cent of emissions'
CTSco project manager Darren Greer said the project had the potential to be scaled up, and for more than half a billion tonnes of carbon to be stored at Moonie, making it one of the biggest onshore CCS projects in Australia.
Mr Greer said the technology was proven, with more than 65 projects in operation or being built across the world, and that the cost to capture and store carbon was coming down.
"When you look at the projects around the world, it comes at a cost of between sort of $60 to $80 a tonne," he said.
"But the technology, that's the last generation of technology. The new generation of technologies that are emerging now have the ability to more than halve that."
Mr Greer said the project would be a test case for CCS in Australia and it could decide whether the technology would be used across the country.
The federal government is investing $20 billion into "low emissions technologies" including CCS, and the project at Moonie has already received $5 million in federal funding.
Deputy Nationals Leader David Littleproud said the government's investment in CCS would save jobs in the coal industry.
"This is an investment in particularly those areas like Maranoa that are heavy in resources and in energy production," Mr Littleproud said.
"We're saying to not only Australia, but to the world that this technology can reduce our emissions, which will mean not only do we keep those jobs here, but also jobs in our coal gas will continue."
Mr Littleproud said other countries including Japan and the United States were investing in CSS as well.
"[In Japan] coal is being burned, the carbon is being captured and it's also being mixed with ammonia, to make it cheaper and quicker and easier to transport," he said.
"Very encouraging signs around this technology plus the fact that the Biden administration is also investing real money into this technology."
Fossil fuel industry 'impossible to decarbonise'
Despite the positive messaging from CCS proponents, the Climate Council's Greg Bourne said that many CCS projects around the world were actually used to enhance the production of oil and gas.
"There are 28 major projects around the world, but every single one of them — every single one of them — is basically tied into what’s known as enhanced oil recovery, or the production of liquefied natural gas," he said.
Mr Bourne is a former BP engineer, and said while CCS could play a role in helping reduce emissions from industries such as cement production and steel making, saying the technology could save the gas and coal industry was a "false hope".
"When you do the numbers … you find very, very quickly that it's just impossible to decarbonise the fossil fuel industry in any way, shape, or form."
Mr Bourne said the federal government should instead be focusing on natural advantages such as solar and wind.
"[We have] more sun and more wind than you can poke a stick at [and] we will harness that."
CCS 'three times the cost' of renewables
Energy finance analyst Bruce Robertson, from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), said using CCS on a coal plant was "horrendously expensive."
“If we’re talking a coal fired power station: According to the CSIRO, a coal-fired power station in 2030 should cost around $102 a megawatt-hour," he said.
"If you add carbon captured and storage it goes up to $186 a megawatt-hour.
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull went further, recently describing CCS as 'a con' and a 'proven failure' at an energy conference.
"It is being used by the fossil fuel sector as a distraction to delay the end of burning coal and gas," Mr Turnbull said.
"Now, to take this con on, we've established the green hydrogen organization, which I'm chairman, it will be and is now a global advocate for green hydrogen as the only colour hydrogen that is genuinely clean."
For CTSCo project manager Darren Greer, the project will just be one of many strategies used to help Australia meet its 2050 net-zero target.
PM speaks at COP26"I think the ability to emit CO2 unabated, those days numbered."
